Sustainable Schools Project

Yesterday was the launch of the Enguage project, a Sustainable Schools initiative by West Sussex County Council. The project uses a specially designed susguage to measure the sustainability of individual schools. The results show schools where they are doing well and areas that they may need to work on to achieve sustainability in various areas including the school grounds, energy and water use, local procurement, waste management and recycling, well being etc.

The project then aims to guide schools with the aid of a group of specialists in ways that they can improve the sustainability of these different areas. I have been working on the project, with a fellow ecologist, as school grounds specialists. This includes encouraging biodiversity in school grounds and encouraging the use of the school grounds to study and experience wildlife. There are also many other areas of the schools curriculum that could be done outside in school grounds. And of course, time spent outside in the grounds whether it is active sport, drama or quite reading all add to the children's well being.


Here are a few pictures from the Launch



The project launch was hosted by Weald School, one of the pilot schools. The launch took place in the hexagonal library.




The display included a case study and a display stand, two laptop presentations about our work with school grounds, information, exhibits and literature.



Information about nest boxes, bird nest quiz and live exhibits; large white caterpillars, snails and damselfly larvae.

My IT based habitat mapping project, here are examples of several schools. Photographs depicting different areas of the grounds can be linked to the map. These can include both movies files and sound files, (the latter either animal sounds or children's descriptions etc.) linked to the photographs.


Example of how literacy, numeracy, art and other cross curriculum subjects can be used to study the school grounds.

If you would like to see more info about working with school grounds, check out the blog entry for June 2008 "National School Grounds Week."

If you would like to know more about the Enguage Project, check out the Enguage Project link on the West Sussex Grid for Learning below.

http://wsgfl.westsussex.gov.uk/ccm/navigation/community-based-projects/engauge---sustainability-in-schools/